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Jamie Clark, will take charge of diamond laboratories    De Beers Group announces that after 20 years with the business, Head of De Beers Group Industry Services and Head of Forevermark Operations, Jonathan (Jonnie) Kendall will be retiring at the end of the year.   Jonnie has played an integral role in leading the evolution of many of De Beers Group’s downstream activities since he joined the company in 2001, holding a variety of roles during this time. Key achievements included helping to modernise the company’s approach to building stronger relationship with clients, launching the original Forevermark programme in 2005 and undertaking major marketing campaigns to support De Beers Group’s global leadership position. In recent years, Jonnie led the development and launch of what is today known as De Beers Group Industry Services and the Institute of Diamonds, offering world-class diamond grading, testing, synthetic detection technology and education services to the diamond trade.

The new custom-built diamond recovery vessel Likely to begin production by 2022! Anglo American plc announces the approval by Debmarine Namibia, a 50:50 joint venture between De Beers Group and the Government of the Republic of Namibia, of the construction of a new custom-built diamond recovery vessel. At an expected total capital cost of $468 million ($234 million attributable to Anglo American), this new vessel will become the seventh in the Debmarine Namibia fleet, expected to begin production in 2022 with the capacity to add 500,000 carats of annual production, a 35% increase above Debmarine Namibia’s current levels. Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “The addition of this custom-built vessel for the Debmarine Namibia joint venture will bring numerous benefits – in terms of De Beers’ production profile by value and volume, the technologies that can be deployed from the outset to deliver greater efficiency and productivity, and sustained e